Four people were wounded after a shooter opened fire at a Walmart near Dayton, Ohio, before taking his own life Monday night, police said.
The suspect, described only as male, entered the store around 8:35 p.m. and shot four people before turning the gun on himself, Beavercreek police said. He died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to the department.
“No shots were fired by any responding police officers,” the Beavercreek Police Department said in a social media post.
The victims were taken to area hospitals for treatment, Capt. Scott Molnar said in a news briefing Monday. No information was available on their conditions.
Police have not identified the suspect and it’s unclear if he knew any of the victims at the store in Beavercreek, a suburb to the east of Dayton.
Monday night’s violence marks at least the second deadly shooting at the store and comes nearly 10 years after police shot and killed a man holding an air rifle he found on a store shelf without its packaging. It’s also among at least 609 mass shootings in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.
“We’re heartbroken by what’s happened at our Beavercreek, Ohio, store,” a Walmart spokesperson said in a statement to CNN Monday night. “This remains a developing situation, and we’re working closely with investigators on the scene.”
The FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, were all investigating the shooting Monday night.
Students at nearby Wright State University told CNN affiliate WKEF that they shop at the store.
“It’s crazy thinking that we’re literally less than five minutes away where we live. They could have went to a campus and not a Walmart, and it could have been us,” Wright State University student Kailie Conley told WKEF.
The location was the site of another shooting in 2014, CNN affiliate WLWT reported. In that incident, police shot and killed 22-year-old John Crawford III, who picked up an unwrapped air rifle that was left on top of its box inside of the store. The killing of the unarmed Black man sparked outrage and calls for reform.
Source : CNN
